The Legislature’s main duty every year is passage of the state budget. Last week, the House made considerable progress by finishing up budget subcommittee work. Budget subcommittees meet frequently with each department to navigate potential budget changes and create a plan for the upcoming budget. I am chair for three budget subcommittees: The departments of Education, Environmental Conservation and Transportation.
So far, our department budgets do not look much different than last year’s budgets. For the Department of Education, we added additional funding for pre-K grants and encouraged the WWAMI medical student scholarship program to plan to increase their Alaska student count.
In the Department of Transportation, we voted to fund the Alaska Marine Highway System at 2019 levels through a combination of federal infrastructure money and state unrestricted general funds. Using this combination of funds leaves more federal infrastructure money available for capital projects and reduces the use of ticket sales revenues so that we can build up the marine highway fund. Thanks to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, we have a potentially much brighter future for the state ferry system.
I am also a member of the University of Alaska and the Department of Fish and Game subcommittees. In the university subcommittee, we increased funding for library databases (which were frequently used during the pandemic) and increased funding to support the university’s mariculture, North Pacific fisheries, Arctic and North Pacific ocean sciences programs.
The budget goes next to the House Finance Committee, of which I am vice chair. We will hear overviews from each subcommittee on their specific department budget changes. Most importantly, we also will hear public testimony. This is an opportunity for you to comment on issues like education funding, ferry service, support or opposition of a larger Permanent Fund dividend in exchange for potential new taxes, and agency funding issues such as Department of Fish and Game management.
Ketchikan and Wrangell public testimony time is scheduled for 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday. You can visit the local Legislative Information Office or call in from your personal phone. There will also be off-net public testimony for anyone in the state, particularly in smaller communities that don’t have a legislative office, starting at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The call-in number for people not able to visit the legislative office is 844-586-9085. You can also send written testimony to House.Finance@AKLeg.gov.
-- Rep. Dan Ortiz
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